Enforcement, For A Day

Nevada law stipulates that motorists must give cyclists a berth of three feet (a bit less than a meter) when passing.  Other states have similar laws but they are seldom enforced.  One reason is that police officers can't be, and surveillance cameras aren't, everywhere.  

While some motorists deliberately ignore such a rule because they feel entitled to a road "my taxes paid for" (well, so did mine and those of every other cyclist!), others don't realize such regulations exist.  For that matter, many law enforcement officials aren't cognizant of them as well.

On Wednesday morning, a Las Vegas police officer rode a bicycle equipped with a laser device that measured the distance between bicycles and passing cars along a popular loop. He called out violations to  more than a dozen other officers staged  along that route. By that afternoon, 170 cars were stopped for violations or warnings, 184 citations were handed out and about 30 warnings were given to drivers.

Sgt. Michael Campbell rides bicycle as part of enforcement effort on West Charleston Boulevard in Las Vegas. (Photo by K.M. Cannon for the Las Vegas Journal-Review

Of course, roads and other bike routes are almost never as heavily-patrolled as that Las Vegas loop was on Wednesday.  I am all but certain that the nearby road where a truck ran down Gerard Suarez Nieva, Thomas Chamberlin Trauger, Erin Michelle Ray, Aksoy Ahmet and Michael Todd Murray on 10 December didn't have the kind of police presence--or a video surveillance camera.